Understanding The Importance Of Accurate Keywords For Page Ranking
Keyword: definition
We have all heard of “keywords” but what are they exactly? The best way to define keywords is like this: what is the word or phrase people will put into the search engine to locate your site. Keywords are a vital part of the creation of web pages because they directly affect how visible the page will be to search engine traffic. It is important to use keywords properly in the creation of your site.
Keyword: research
The best way to decide on what keyword to optimize your site for is to use a keyword selector tool. The most widely used free keyword research tool is the Google Adwords Keyword tool. Enter your base search phrase or keyword and it will bring up a list of keywords. Additionally it will provide you with information regarding how many times those keywords were searched for within the most recent month. Another tool for improving the depth of your keyword list is to use the online keyword tool such as the Overture and Free Wordtracker tool. These tools help by providing other related searches that support the Webmasters to further expand their keywords.
Keyword: implementation
Your keyword should be in the meta tags of your website. Additionally, the keyword should be prominent in the content of the page itself. One word of caution is to avoid over using your keyword. As an example, this article is about keyword research. The number of times your keyword phrase is used could have an adverse effect if you appear to the search engines that your web pages are stuffed with keywords without have content that is useful to your readers. Keywords should be placed in page titles, page descriptions, in the page URL and properly sprinkled about the page articles. Here is a rather obvious observation regarding keyword placement on your web pages and web site; you must use keywords than can also be found throughout your website as your pages could be de-indexed by the search engines. Stuffing your site with keywords about sex when your actual site topic is about reptile vacations would be seen as attempts at search engine manipulation, and your sites would be treated as such.
Keyword: metrics
A popular phrase in corporate-speak is “You cannot improve that which you do not measure.” A derivative of that same sentiment is “You cannot manage that which you cannot measure.” I think you get the picture. It is necessary to use site measurement tools to be able to evaluate the effectiveness of your keyword strategy. Paid tools include Market Samurai, Rank Tracker, and WebSite Auditor. Free tools include Google Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics and Yahoo Local Dashboard For Business. With these tools you should be able to analyze and validate the usefulness of certain keywords. You will be able to track which words direct the most traffic to your site, and which ones can help you close more business.
Keyword: summarization
Keywords are very important they help the search engines to identify your site for searchers. Most web developers only think of the base keyword when discussing ‘targeted keywords.’ Overlooking ‘minor keywords’ or ‘keyword phrases’, often called long tail keywords, developers will only target the main keyword and forget the importance of using the others. Every webmasters should have a list of the targeted keywords for their sites and continuously expand this list when they have measured the results for specific terms.
Review
- Keywords and Meta Tags
- Meta tags are like a site’s “dog tags.” They identify the site’s title, description, and keywords. Meta tags are invisible to web surfers, but they are instrumental in a search engine’s recognition of the site’s content.
- Title Tags
- A title tag gives the title of the web page. A title should only be around six words long, and the primary keyword – the word or phrase that the site is primarily identified with – should be in this title tag. The closer to the beginning of the title the primary keyword is, the stronger the association with that keyword will be.
- Description Tags
- A web page’s description tag provides the search engines with a summary of the content contained on the page. Once again, the primary keywords for this page should be contained in the description, as close to the beginning as possible. Description tags only allow 200 characters of text.
- Keyword Tags
- The keyword tag lists all of the keywords that can be associated with the web page. The primary keyword used in the title and description tags should be first, followed by other keywords in order of importance and relevance. Although keywords can be separated by commas, they don’t have to be; however, keywords should not be repeated more than three times, lest the web page be rejected by the search engines as spam. Between 800 and 1,000 characters are allowed for keyword text.
- Keywords and Image Tags
- Image tags are the text that shows up in place of an image, if the image fails to load for any reason. However, image tags serve a more important function: they allow the search engines to “read” your images. Without image tags, search engines have no way of interpreting your images. Therefore, image tags can also help boost the visibility and relevancy of your site to search engines.
- Keywords and Web Page Content
- The tags that you use on a web page are important identifiers for search engines. However, in order to maintain a respectable search engine ranking, your Web page must establish relevancy. In other words, the keywords in your tags must pertain to the actual content on the page. Therefore, the same keywords you list in your tags must be used within the text your page displays.
Keyword research is absolutely the most critical part of search engine optimization for any web site. The results of keyword research guide the development of the site, the off-site optimization program and the direction of metric analysis. If the prospect of complicated matrices and word analysis causes you cold sweats, you can always rely on qualified optimization specialists like Total Online Marketing to make the process simple and successful.
